Anthony Watts has often snuggled up to Dr. Soon. Hand-waving about solar climate influences has been a great side-show for denialists, but it’s been hard for them to find a reliable figurehead for their obstruction. Being able to whisper “HArvard! SmithSONian!” must have been just irresistible. Dr. Soon’s work, while widely discredited, had a “sciencey” look and he made a great tame Republican witness in kangaroo court Senate Hearings.

The best Anthony can do is suggest that the benighted Dr. Soon is the victim of a smear campaign because, well, facts are smears. Then the usual Morris Dance ensues: invoke the malevolent “compliant media” and immediately talk about something else.

Did you know that “climate science is a huge money machine”? So what if Willie wanted a taste! Anthony tries to play the herd mentality card (I guess that makes Dr. Soon our latest Galileo, funny how he’s always reincarnated as a denialist these days) but doesn’t notice that each ‘overturned consensus’ came about through considering new evidence, not through pig-headed repetition of the same crap.

Butter wouldn’t melt in Anthony’s mouth though when he brazenly tries to invoke the e-mails of mainstream climate scientists targeted in the false “Climategate” uproar. They solicited funds from the energy industry too, although without the flirtatious promises, Willie’s just the latest nose in the trough! What were once vices are now virtues, the denialist outrage during Climategate is so yesterday.

Remember the whole “97% of climate scientists accept the evidence of global warming” thing? Guys like Willie Soon are the 3%.

“Follow the money” Anthony sagely advises, but he really wants to lead us down the garden path.

Is this truculent hubris, or just plain old Dunning–Kruger syndrome? You can decide, but I’ll just whisper this to Anthony: “skillfull” is spelt “skillful”. I know, I know, it takes a lot of fingers to keep track of the “l”s. Also, “counterstrike” should have a dash in there somewhere.

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions had recently tried to use Pielke’s testimony from July 2013 to run the old “nothing’s changed”/”warming is good anyway!” shell game while questioning Dr. Holdren (linked on Rabett Run). Dr. Holdren testified that increased drought in the American West and Southwest has been a consequence of anthropogenic climate change. Sessions tried to dispute this irritating fact using Pielke’s – totally honest-broker, like, fer sure – testimony claiming there hasn’t been a change in drought trends. Dr. Holdren promised to back up his testimony and put Pielke’s in context and did so a few days later. It makes for an amusing read, unless you’re Roger Pielke Jr.

When Dr. Holdren cited research confirming his testimony and exposed Pielke’s classic quote-mining, Pielke revealed his debating ninja skills a blog post titled John Holdren’s Epic Fail. First, the right-wing nutters at The Daily Caller oversold Pielke’s argument in its partisan coverage of the testimony and Dr. Holdren thought they were quoting Pielke directly. Oh, that’s terrible! But more importantly, while Pielke had written that there was no change in drought trends, he put a little footnote-y thing to a journal paper that if you bothered to track down out of idle curiosity and then read through the whole thing shows that there has in fact been an increase in drought in the West and Southwest. That’s how you win the internets. Otherwise it’s all hurt feelings and wailing about politicizing the purity of collegial science. “Tone” is a favourite fall-back position for Pielke.

So no, Anthony: shouting a lie (Pielke’s “Take Home Points”from his 2013 testimony) and then whispering the 180° opposite truth (in a completely opaque footnote) doesn’t count as a “skillfull counterstrike.” It’s just building an escape hatch into the lie.

“Mind blowing: Apple CEO tells ‘deniers’ to get out of Apple stock“ (2014-03-03). Anthony Watts publishes so many dumb/nasty things on his blog I often decide the toxic exposure just isn’t worth the time. His blog is like a TV stuck on an endless loop of carnival hucksters extolling the magical healing powers of magnetic bracelets (except that Big Pharma is suppressing clinical trials), but now and then a stray squawk catches my ear and makes me laugh.

Here we have Anthony echoing the so-called National Center for Public Policy Research, “a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank” dedicated to “expos[ing] efforts by left-wing interest groups to divert businesses away from best practices and into left-wing advocacy.” They were smacked down pretty hard when they tried to ask Apple’s CEO a question about the resolution they had submitted (devastatingly rejected) at Apple Inc’s recent AGM. Like Apple’s previous CEO, Tim Cook doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Especially stubbornly short-sighted, hypocritical ones who only get their knickers in a twist when a corporation’s political bias doesn’t match their own.

The “National Center” wanted Apple to pollute more and use more child labour so shareholders could make more money. Also, Apple should stop supporting equality and justice. The disgusted rebuff from Apple’s CEO is now being spun as proof that liberals and environmentalists are mean and secretive.

Anthony has long nurtured an irrational hatred for Apple, probably driven by the company’s long record of supporting liberal causes. His contribution to the self-pity party is below, with my annotations. And you thought Anthony was just mule-headed wrong on environmental issues!

Hmmm. This is the best argument I’ve ever heard for not using Apple products (besides the overinflated prices). [False claim. Same price as equal quality competitors. – Ben] Being flush with cash is probably why the CEO says he doesn’t care about the ROI (return on investment) [Misrepresentation. “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.” Apple has a highest profit margins in the industry so only an idiot – paging Anthony & Co. – would conclude that Apple doesn’t care about ROI. – Ben] and won’t make the costs transparent per a shareholder request [What cost is Apple concealing? – Ben]. Seems like a sensible business request to me. [Yeah, Anthony and these libertarian dick-wads have SO MUCH to teach one of America’s most successful corporations! – Ben]

This whole thing is playing out like run-of-the-mill libertarian posturing. How is even Anthony’s feeble mind “blown”?

Silly Mike, Anthony only by pure chance used the option on the NSIDC charting web page that suppressed the display of statistical significance! That’s just misrepresentation, not dishonesty, the kind of thin line that Anthony spends his life dancing back and forth over.

Anthony Watts likes to use the version of this chart that excludes statistical context. Makes it easier to imply that every wiggle is “just natural”. Click to see the difference.

After a short display of indignation Anthony runs quickly through the gamut of blogging postures.

Victim card: WtD is driven by “hatred”!

Anticipation of censorship: “I’ve left a comment explaining Mr. Marriott’s absurd misconception and asked for an apology. We’ll see if it passes moderation, and if he lives up to his “professional services” label.” Oh, it made it along with all the other denialist ditto head attacks. Mike ain’t you, Anthony.

Megalomania: The king of the interwebs commandeth and threatens – “Change it sir. I won’t ask again.”

An update to the whining: Anthony contentedly reports that WtD has been forced to change their post, retracting the “photoshop” claim. Funny I can’t recall Anthony ever doing the same, I guess he’s always been right.

Thus ending Global Warming. Which was natural anyway if it was happening. Which it wasn’t.

Also, Skeptical Science and DeSmogBlog haven’t explicitly disavowed Professor Parncutt’s essay suggesting the execution of denialists, so that clearly means they support it.

UPDATE2: 2:55:PM PST In an email received today from Skeptical Science contributor Dana Nuccitelli, he has flat out refused to distance himself or the SkS website publicly from the Parncutt essay. Readers may recall that Parncutt used SkS as a reference in his essay calling for the death penalty. No word yet on whether John Cook (owner of the website) agrees and no word yet from DeSmog blog. – Anthony

Funny, I happen to have Mr. Nuccitelli’s actual response here, which was also posted as a comment that was blocked by Anthony’s censors, which seems a bit more nuanced than Anthony’s “reporting”:

From: Dana NuccitelliTo: Anthony <xxxxxxxxxxxx>Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2012 2:47 PMSubject: Re: still waiting…
We of course don’t agree with giving denialists the death penalty, but we’re also not going to waste our time commenting on what some German musicologist said just because he happens to (correctly) cite SkS as a factually accurate source on climate science.

Given than you frequently allow WUWT guest posts from people like Christopher Monckton, who aside from being a total nutjob (to put it as kindly as I can), says some pretty horrible things on a regular basis, I really don’t think you’re in a position to expect more than that.

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“Why I no longer subscribe to Popular Science” (2012-110-03). Anthony Watts reminds us that he holds grudges. Popular Science is still on his long list of subversive publications with which he will have no truck. National Geographic and Scientific American are also on his list.